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The Pirate Bay could be blocked in the UK, after a judge rules it infringes copyright

The high court in London has ruled that Swedish file-sharing website The Pirate Bay breaches copyright on a large scale, and effectively took the site one step closer to being banned in the UK, reports the Guardian.

Launched in 2003, The Pirate Bay is now one of the most recognizable bit-torrent brands, and it has typically always hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Earlier this month, we reported that The Pirate Bay’s founders were denied a Supreme Court appeal in Sweden, meaning that the prison sentences and fines they were handed in November 2010 will stand.

Now, major groups associated with the music industry are pushing for UK Internet service providers (ISPs), such as BT and Sky, to block access to the site.

This mirrors a case from last year, when both Sky and BT were ordered to block access to pirate link-sharing website Newzbin 2. This followed lobbying from the Motion Picture Association (MPA) in the US, which argued that the site facilitated the sharing of pirated movies.

Ever since Megaupload was forced offline by the FBI, The Pirate Bay has been falling under increasing pressure for its role in letting copyrighted material change hands. And it recently moved from a .org domain to a local Swedish .se domain, to prevent the site being seized by US authorities.

In a written judgement today, Mr Justice Arnold ruled that The Pirate Bay and its users were responsible for the unlawful sharing of copyrighted music in the UK. He said:

“In my judgment, the operators of [The Pirate Bay] do authorise its users’ infringing acts of copying and communication to the public. They go far beyond merely enabling or assisting.

I conclude that both users and the operators of [The Pirate Bay] infringe the copyrights of the claimants…in the UK.”

The record labels claim that The Pirate Bay ignored requests to stop copyrighted music from being shared, and that it earned up to $3m through advertising in October alone last year. It says that around 4m music and movie files were shared by 30 million users globally, 3.7 million of whom live in the UK.

“The High Court today ruled that The Pirate Bay is illegal,” said Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the British Phonographic Industry, representing the UK music groups. “The site defrauds musicians and causes huge damage to the music industry and wider creative industries.

“The ruling helps clarify the law on website blocking and we will now proceed with our application to have the site blocked to protect the UK’s creative industries from further harm,” he continued.

A final decision is expected this coming June. However, if the Newzbin 2 case is to be used as a precedent, then it is likely that ISPs will be ordered to stop its customers from accessing The Pirate Bay.

Indeed, the judge has effectively ruled that The Pirate Bay is ‘illegal’ for all intents and purposes, so it would be surprising if anything less than an ISP-enforced block comes into effect. “Despite their ability to do so and despite the judicial findings that have been made against them, the operators of [The Pirate Bay] take no steps to prevent infringement,” he said. “On the contrary…they actively encourage it and treat any attempts to prevent it (judicial or otherwise) with contempt.”